Gemma Townley - When in Rome...

“David, look, about the whole Candy and Mike thing. It’s really not a big deal. I know why you didn’t tell me: you were trying to protect me. But I’m so over Mike . . .”

David is looking at me as if I’m completely mad.

“Right, right, of course.”

Is he trying to make me suffer?

“David, what’s the matter?” I’ve never seen him like this. He walks everywhere purposefully, knows exactly what he thinks about everything. He doesn’t do stress or anxiety; he’s always the one who tells other people that everything will be okay.

He focuses on the menu for a minute, as if he’s trying to collect his thoughts, then looks up at me.

“I think I’m about to lose my job,” he says flatly. I’m filled with relief. So that’s all! David doesn’t know about me and Mike; it’s just a work thing. Maybe they’ve found out about the Mike saga being made up. Which is also bad, but not as bad as him finding out about Mike and me. I mean, there are other jobs.

I try to look concerned and surprised. “David, I’m sure it’s not that bad, is it?”

His eyes are darting around again.

“Georgie, if I tell you something, will you promise, and I mean really promise, not to tell another living soul?”

I nod. This is going to be great. David will confide in me, I can be all understanding and supportive and we’ll get through it together. It’ll just make us stronger as a couple. And one day we’ll look back and laugh at how serious it all seemed at the time.

“I’m working on a case that’s, well, a bit close to home. I didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t get out of it.”

I’m not sure where he is going, but I squeeze his hand and wait for him to continue.

“It’s about Mike . . .” David looks up at me, as if he needs to check my reaction.

Here we go. I nod again, but inside I’m feeling quite excited. Just wait till I tell him that I know all about it and have totally saved his bacon!

“What about Mike?”

“He has been under surveillance for several months.”

David looks down and then up again. Like he can’t focus on anything, even me, for too long.

“He’s been defrauding his company’s investors and the bands he’s signed.”

I can’t help feeling disappointed. I thought David was going to tell me the truth, and instead he’s telling me the false story. Why can’t he just admit that he was jealous and that he screwed up?

“His investors,” I say with a sigh. “You mean Candy’s father?” I ask.

“And the rest. At least Candy’s father can probably afford it. Mike got people to invest their last penny in his bloody record label. He got people who should have known better investing their pensions—theirpensions , for crying out loud. He managed to get about a million together by convincing friends of his parents, friends of my parents, and people we both knew when we were growing up, to give him their last bit of cash.”

“But they’ll get their money back, won’t they? I mean the business is doing really well, isn’t it?”

I’m a bit unsettled. This conversation isn’t going the way I thought it would.

“Get it back?” David laughs sarcastically. “Get what back? There’s nothing left. Mike took every last penny out of the company to buy himself a flat, and has been faking invoices to sell to a factoring company. He even got into some sort of money laundering for a gang in Rome. He is in very deep trouble. But not as much trouble as he’s going to be in with me for ripping off my parents’ friends. I am never going to let him get away with that.”

I’m really confused now. And maybe a little bit scared.

“We got a tip-off from one of his employees who gave us this disk with a lot of incriminating evidence on it,” continues David. “Apparently their salary checks have been bouncing, and none of the bands or DJs have been paid for the past four months. The employee in question got sacked soon after. Since then I’ve been gathering evidence . . .”

He looks at me and I can see his forehead twitch with tension. “That’s why I had to go to Rome

—I was following Mike. He’s been moving funds into Spain via Italy and Switzerland. He took a whole load of money in with him to Rome, but we don’t know how; his bags were checked at the airport and nothing was found.”

David sighs, and carries on in a deadpan voice. “My contacts there confirmed his links with an organized crime group in Italy. He’s a fucking liability.

“Anyway,” he continues with a sigh, “we had enough evidence to swoop today. We’ve been working with the police and they were all ready to arrest him. Except that I was looking after the vital piece of evidence. And now it’s gone missing.”

Okay, this is not the way it was meant to go. I’m getting a really nasty feeling here. When is David going to admit that the whole thing was made up because he was jealous?

“It went missing?” I ask in as casual a manner as I can muster.

“Yes. I just can’t understand it. I had it, and now it’s gone. But it’s worse than that. I think someone’s trying to set me up. Someone has actually been searching through my files—when I started to boot up my computer this morning, it had already been turned on and not shut down properly. And now my firm suspects that I’m trying to bury evidence. They got a tip yesterday that I’d been blackmailing Mike and demanding money in return for “losing” the disk. And money’s been appearing in my account. I didn’t even notice. My firm thinks I’m a criminal, Georgie. This morning they had the police in.”

He looks like he’s going to cry. “It’s looking really bad. I’m not sure how I’m going to get out of this.”

The waiter comes over to take our order and David stops talking. He stares out of the window, trying to compose himself. I ask if we can have a few more minutes. Seeing the state David’s in, the waiter backs away quickly.

Everything has gone hideously pear-shaped. If what David says is true, then Mike has been lying to me. Which would be nothing particularly new. But if Mike has been lying to me, then what I have done is . . . more terrible than anything in the world. Suddenly I start to feel sick and now I’m the one who’s sweating as I piece together the events of the past month.

“How . . . how long did you say you’ve been following Mike?” I’m trying to sound perfectly normal, but my voice is cracking.

“About six months in all, I think. I’ve been on the case for about a month.”

“So, what, you joined the case about the time we bumped into Mike?”

“A couple of weeks before.”

“And he would have known, he would have been aware, that you were on to him when we bumped into each other.”

“Yes, yes. Look, that isn’t important. The thing is, I think someone I know may be trying to frame me. Someone must be working with Mike. I just can’t work it out.”

I think I might be about to faint. All I can think about is the package Mike gave me to carry to Rome; the disk I stole from David; the phone call in Italy from Mike’s “family.” Everything is going black. But I’m not fainting. I’m just realizing how stupid, how utterly stupid and horrible I’ve been. I want the ground to swallow me up.

“It was me.”

I say it quietly. All my muscles are tense as I wait for David’s reaction.

He looks at me strangely.

“What do you mean, it was you?”

I am very hot and uncomfortable.

“It was me who took the disk.” I’ll leave the money issue to one side for now. I mean, David doesn’t need to know that, right?

David’s face is deathly white. I can feel my skin go all prickly and I feel like I’m somewhere else watching this episode played out by a body double. It’s far too awful to be really happening.